President Trump and his allies have struggled for months to come up with effective ways to confront Senator Elizabeth Warren, whose steady rise in the polls put the lie to Mr. Trump’s boasts last spring that she was “finished” and “gone,” undone by her past claims of Native American ancestry. …
But in the past week, conservative news sites have challenged Ms. Warren’s story about how a public school principal forced her out of a teaching job in 1971 because she was “visibly pregnant,” and the Republican National Committee grabbed onto the issue to wage its own attack. In doing so, Republicans employed a tactic — questioning a female candidate’s authenticity — that is at once often a sexist trope in politics and a strategy used against Hillary Clinton in 2016. …
“This is a tried and true tactic when it comes to women candidates and elected officials, because women pay a much higher price when their honesty and integrity is called into question,” said Amanda Hunter, research and communications director at the Barbara Lee Family Foundation, which supports women in politics. CONT.
Thomas Kaplan, New York Times